Strategies of L1 and L2 greeting and small talk in Chinese
Abstract
Greetings have been considered one of the most important strategies to establish and maintain social relations. Chinese greetings are particularly rich and highly situation-dependent and governed by various social factors. This investigation attempts to examine the similarities and differences of Mandarin greeting strategies utilized by L1 (first language of Chinese) speakers and L2 (second language of Chinese) learners, the effects of power, social distance, and time factors upon greetings. In this study, various strategies for opening Chinese conversations are considered as greeting strategies. This study explores greeting strategies in eight senarios produced by 30 Chinese undergraduate students studying in China and 30 undergraduate students taking advanced Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) at a university in the United States. A Discourse Completion Test (DCT) was used to elicit data related to greetings. Descriptive discourse analysis and Fisher's exact tests were conducted to identify the pragmatic differences that distinguished the behavior of L1 speakers and L2 learners. The data demonstrates that there are 12 major strategies in Chinese greetings. L1 speakers and L2 learners have different preferences for greeting strategies in eight typical university situations in which greetings are commonly utilized. L1 speakers employ greeting strategies more frequently than L2 learners in most cases. Contextual variables, such as power status and familiarity have a great influence on the use of strategies in L1 and L2. The findings of this study indicate that the power variable, based on social rank, takes precedence over the social distance variable, based on familiarity, in Chinese greetings. Such findings can be useful in developing Chinese textbooks and teaching Chinese greetings and pragmatics in the classroom.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Hong, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Linguistics|Foreign language education
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